


Me, Myself and I

by a_pocket_full_of_fancy_words



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Bear - Freeform, Confusion, Eating Disorder Triggers, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Past psychological abuse, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Reference to possible sexual abuse, Trauma, like very slightly crack or farcical but mostly serious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-06 06:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 7,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1847218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_pocket_full_of_fancy_words/pseuds/a_pocket_full_of_fancy_words
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It would take a real bastard to give the Winter Soldier a Bucky Bear as a joke, wouldn't it?</p><p>Steve finds Bucky post TWS, and is horrified to find him holding a mutilated, neglected Bucky Bear, whom he believes is somehow the real Bucky that he must protect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work is actually a series of really short "chapters" (I use this term loosely), which I wrote/am writing due to writer's block in order to keep writing *something* until I can actually do anything real again.  
> (I know Bucky Bear didn't become a thing until like, 2012 or something, but in this fic he's been a thing since the 50s)

"What’s that you got?" Steve asks, as gently as he can. His back aches from holding what he hopes is an The Winter Soldier hunches up further in the far corner of the alleyway, curling round the Something to protect it. "You can bring it with you, no one’s going to take it away…"

Bucky looks at him, his eyes frightened and doleful, smudged with ink now there are no more handlers to give him his make-up. It should’ve taken longer to track him down, Steve thinks. He should’ve routed every HYDRA safehouse in the Northern Hemisphere looking for answers, or maybe just run away. But here he is, four days into the search, behind a take-out restaurant in DC, having broken into one HYDRA operation in a bank and apparently taken nothing.

"I’m coming closer," Steve warns.

"You mustnfffh…"The Winter Soldier mutters something unintelligible, face screwed in concentration or pain. 

"What’s that?"

Bucky must think he’s still asking about the Something he has cradled to his chest, because what he says next is definitely not a repetition of what he said before.

“It’s Bucky Bear.” His voice is rough, as though it's been severely underused. He proffers forth a ragged stuffed toy with not enough stuff. It takes Steve almost a minute to realise that it isn’t some kind of dead animal; it hangs limp from his hand, old and superficially loved, but unpatched and unrepaired. It  _is_  a Bucky Bear, although its blue coat has faded to an uneven grey, only one button remains stitched to its front, and its red nose has been rubbed or abraded until all that remains is a mesh of red thread and a window to the off-white clumps of stuffing within.

Steve stops dead halfway down the alleyway as the magnitude of somebody’s sick joke hits him. He feels an intense need to sit down, and he does, because even though the ground is covered in stale piss and crushed glass, it seems to be rolling beneath him. “You went to get Bu- the- the bear? A bear?”

Bucky doesn’t seem to understand his distress, but he doesn’t seem surprised that Steve is there, either. As though he’s been waiting for someone to pick him up, and any face he recognises will do. “You said you wouldn’t take him away. The Secretary said I could keep him.”

The Secretary. Pierce. Steve swallows convulsively, his mouth full of saliva as though he’s about to throw up. “Of course not, Bucky. It’s me, I won’t take anything away from you.”

Bucky doesn't respond. He looks down at the toy, like he's conferring, like he thinks Steve is talking to the bear.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve makes the mistake of saying Bucky’s name as he shows him his bed. When he comes back in the night to check on him, the bear is tucked up alone and Bucky is lying on the floor beside it. 

"Did you let me live because I knew about your bear?" Steve wonders aloud. "Did you think I was talking about him?"

Bucky turns his head to look at him, eyes glassy but awake. He doesn’t respond. 

—-

The next morning Steve tries to find out more about Bucky, and when the grunting responses dry up, he asks about Bucky bear. Bucky is willing to tell him events about the bear, where he got it and how long he thinks he’s had it. And he won’t let Steve within a good ten feet of the bear or him. 

He was given the bear as either a mission or a reward, he tells him. He doesn’t know what for. His face is blank and his voice distant, but there’s a lick of pride and affection in it that makes Steve’s chest constrict like a snake around his heart. The Secretary gave it to him, but Bucky doesn’t know a name, any name, apart from Steve and Bucky Bear, and Steve can’t be sure if it was Pierce or his predecessor. He says he got the bear two years ago, but the bear is at least a decade old, and doing that kind of damage to a soft toy in any less than that would require genuine malice, which Bucky has yet to display, at least where the bear is concerned. 

When Sam comes around, Bucky tells him that he’s always had the bear and refuses to acknowledge that he’s changed his story. 

"You can’t have him," Bucky tells Sam from the far side of the living room. 

"I don’t want him," Sam says carefully. 

Bucky processes the words for a minute and then frowns deeply. He doesn’t speak to Sam for the rest of the evening.

The bear doesn’t cope very well with rejection, which is not surprising because Bucky never did, either.


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky sleeps on the floor next to the bed in the spare room for four nights and Steve doesn’t tell anyone but Sam. His attempts to compel Bucky to sleep in Bucky Bear’s bed without resorting to trying to order him are essentially all failures. Sleeping  _with_  Bucky Bear isn’t an option. 

"He gets too hot," Bucky spits at Steve in outrage when he suggests it. 

Bucky used to be like a furnace in bed. Steve can only wonder if Bucky is saying this because he gets too warm with the extra insulation or because he genuinely attributes being too hot to the bear. Maybe it has a personality, perhaps he talks to it like a child with a favourite toy.

It doesn’t seem to be Bucky’s favourite toy, though, not that he has any other toys or any other favourite things. It’s more like a prized possession or a sickly animal that someone untrustworthy is trying to remove from his care.

"You know you’re called Bucky, don’t you?" Steve tries again, and again. And again. "The bear is named after you."

That assertion makes Bucky angry, but he reigns it in. “He is not,” He responds, petulant. 

"Yeah he is. You’re the original Bucky Barnes and he was made and named after you."

 

Steve is banned from Bucky Bear’s room, and his couch cushions are pilfered for the comfort of Bucky Bear’s 24/7 body guard instead. He tries not to mind. 

In the absence of a genuine handler, the Winter Soldier defers to the bear in all matters, declaring its likes and dislikes and mandating that Steve does not address or, eventually, look at it. 

The bear itself shares its preferences with the former Bucky Barnes, preferring its sausages to be boiled, and declining porridge on the Soldier’s behalf. 

—-

"So the bear is clearly a metaphor," Sam looks dismally into the pan of boiling sausages that Steve is preparing. 

"Yeah, I’m getting that." The kitchen is filling with steam because Steve consistently forgets the existence of the cooker hood. "But what do we do about it?"

"Have you tried talking to the bear?" When Steve turns to him it’s clear that Sam is only half joking. 

"It’s not actually a person, so I don’t think it’s nearly such a good conversationalist as Bucky’s making out."

"Obviously I mean with Barnes there so he can… Interpret." Sam is trying very hard not to let Steve fall into a depressive slump, but it’s an uphill struggle. 

"I don’t see how it’s possible when he won’t let me in the room with it." Steve drains the sausages, glaring at them as though they're somehow responsible for this mess. "What would I even say?"

Sam shrugs. “I don’t know, but maybe you could offer it food that doesn’t smell like  _that_.”


	4. Chapter 4

Steve knocks on Bucky’s door. Bucky Bear’s door. 

And it opens to reveal suspicious, bloodshot eyes. The ink from the week before is still clinging to the creases around them, and Steve doubts Bucky has washed his face more than once since he agreed to come home. 

"I need to talk to… Bucky…" He says awkwardly. 

"Bucky  _Bear_?” Bucky looks at him as though daring him to say otherwise. 

"Yeah…" Steve swallows. "Can you… Tell him I’m here?"

"He _knows_ you’re here." Bucky licks his lips. Chapped and bitten. 

"You might need to tell me his replies. My hearing… Isn’t what it used to be." Which isn’t a lie. His audible range is now from ten to twenty-four-thousand Hertz and he can hear most things louder than four decibels, a considerable improvement on his hearing before the serum. Bucky Bear speaks at zero decibels. Bucky glares at Steve, and the latter is beginning to wonder if Bucky Bear is sensitive about his voice. 

Bucky’s mouth opens with an audible click and he sucks on his teeth, looking like someone stuck translating for people who are flirting. “Well? What did you need to say to him?”

"Um…" Steve feels stupid. God he must look like… Bucky, he supposes. Talking to a bear. At least Bucky confers with it silently. "I had quite a few thing to uh, say… That I’m his… Your friend, and I want to help you and I’m obviously… Going to protect you. If that’s alright."

Bucky turns away as though the bear has said something final. 

"Wait, I didn’t hear! What does he say?" Steve pleads, forgetting completely that he’s trying to use a stuffed bear as a medium for his best friend.

Bucky doesn’t look at him as he speaks, voice low and unreadable, “He says, “Better late than never.”“

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your comments! I do read them but haven't had time to respond as I'm busy moving out of my room.  
> Glad I could cause you all such agony! Thank you all for reading :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have triggers, please read the warnings at the end of this chapter.

Bucky talks to Steve less and less of his “own” volition and more and more on behalf of Bucky Bear. He doesn’t seem to enjoy playing messenger, and Steve finds bits of (boiled) cabbage and meat in the trash and takes it to mean that Bucky has been put off his meals.

Worryingly, Steve catches himself trying to talk to the bear when Bucky has finally resigned himself to using the bathroom, after Steve had heavily suggested that bears had sensitive smell.

"Hey Buck," He says into the empty room, and then feels a sudden disappointment, as though he’d been expecting an answer.

He gets up close to Bucky Bear for the first time and picks him - it up. 

It weighs nothing, almost devoid of stuffing in the bottom half and missing one leg. Its fur has an odd texture that speaks of some kind of sexual violation which Steve pointlessly hopes was perpetrated by Bucky and not by some HYDRA agent trying to demean him, before resolutely deciding to never ask ever and to attempt to wash away the evidence at the first available opportunity. Perhaps it has been used in place of a wash cloth, in one of Bucky's more careless moments. The bear smells of what the nuns at their catholic school had dubbed “The Sins of Lesser Men”, as well as sweat and boiled sausage and slightly of rotting vegetables and it’s probably harder on the nose than the real Bucky was before he got into the shower. He puts it back down with the intention of washing his hands as soon as possible.

Bucky coughs when he enters the room, an obvious invitation to step away from Bucky Bear. 

He’s hurried his shower and his pyjama pants are inside-out and back-to-front, but he looks properly clean for the first time since his arrival.

"I… Came to see if you were hungry…" Steve takes an extra step away, until Bucky’s raised hackles come back down. 

Bucky scowls at him. “He wants chicken.”

"You said that yesterday, but you didn’t eat it. And you didn’t have breakfast." Steve doesn’t want to push it. He edges along one wall and Bucky walks closer to the other than strictly necessary until he is between Steve and the bear.

“ _He_ wants chicken,” Bucky repeats. He looks tired and hungry. “You should eat it.”

"Why would  _I_  eat it?” Steve watches the motionless bear over Bucky’s shoulder. 

"Because!" Bucky’s scowl deepens "He wants  _you_  now doesn’t he! He doesn’t  _need_  me.”

Bucky glares at him in open envy and Steve stares back helplessly, with no idea of what to say. “What?”

"Bucky Bear doesn’t  _want_  a Winter Soldier!” Bucky looks close to breaking point, teeth grinding and the components of his prosthetic whirring angrily. Either that will mean tears, or Steve will be losing the deposit on his new apartment.

"But… Why have you stopped eating?" Steve feels like a stuck record. His mind can’t keep up with what Bucky is trying to tell him.

"He. Stopped. Telling. Me. To!" Bucky goes red in the face. His nostrils flare and despairing tears well up in his eyes and roll down his hollow cheeks. "You-you promised! You p-promised you wouldn’t - wouldn’t take him away!"

"Oh, Bucky!" Steve can’t help it, he lunges forwards and scoops the trembling, miserable remnants of his best friend into a hug. Bucky jerks and shakes and holds on tight, sobbing loudly. "I’m sorry, Buck, I haven’t taken anything from you, I swea-"

Bucky brings his knee sharply up into Steve’s balls and leaves him curled up on the floor in Bucky Bear’s bedroom. “Lying bastard!” He growls as he stalks away, leaving Bucky Bear behind for the first time since Steve found him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Um, references to potential bear abuse, possible psychological/sexual violence against Bucky. Sort of.  
> Also eating disorder triggers.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More ED triggers.

It’s serendipity that Bucky marches out the apartment in his back to front pyjamas at the exact same time as Sam turns up with pizza.

It’s something more like a miracle that he agrees to get in Sam’s car rather than storm of past it.

"What happened?" Sam takes in the angry, tear stained face in shock.

Bucky opens his mouth to reply, but a high pitched whine of frustration and pain tears itself from his chest instead.

Sam really doesn’t want to have to ask, but he does have a superhuman assassin crying in his car, so… ”Is Steve okay?”

"I k- I ki- k," Bucky stutters on the k just long enough to give Sam a heart attack. "I kicked him in the balls."

"Oh thank God!" Sam lets out a sigh of relief and earns himself a very odd look from Bucky. "I mean - it doesn’t matter. What happened?"

Bucky turns away looking entirely as though he intends to vandalise Sam’s car. “He took Bucky Bear away from me.”

"He what?" Sam sounds as appalled as he feels and that seems to endear him to Bucky somewhat. "Why?"

Bucky’s distress is palpable and Sam starts driving slowly round the block in an attempt to calm him down. “Why did he take it?”

"He… Didn’t mean to…" Bucky admits tearfully. "Bucky Bear chose him."

Sam nods his head and has no idea what the hell that means. “But… Don’t you need to be there to protect him?”

Bucky shakes his own head, letting it flop about as though he’s just too depressed to bother with ligaments. “Now who’s gonna give me a mission?”

Now seems like a bad time to say no one. “How about you come to mine?”

There’s very little resistance; it seems that without the bear, Bucky is highly suggestible. He sags in a chair at Sam’s kitchen table whilst Sam steps out to text Steve.

"You want some pizza?" He asks when he gets back. Bucky doesn’t so much as blink in response. "You really should eat something."

Phrased more like an order than a suggestion, Bucky opens one of the boxes and wolfs down slice after slice, and begins to cry noisily.

Sam gives him kitchen towels which are variously used to mop up grease, snot and tears. Sam eats in an attempt to make things less uncomfortable, but it’s hard to feel hungry when the guy sitting next to you has been holding the same bite of pizza in his mouth for more than a minute whilst he cries around it.

He wonders if Bucky will ever get better enough to laugh at having a breakdown over the rejection of a cuddly toy, but he doubts it.


	7. Chapter 7

It takes an enormous effort not to go straight there when he receives Sam’s text. Steve is still lying on the floor trying to protect his groin from an absent enemy when it comes, and he lies there for a long while afterwards. 

_Got your boy, Steve. He’s upset about the bear and he’s still pretty confused. I think it’s best he stays with me for a few days. It might be a good idea to keep him and the bear separate, but if it isn’t I’ll come and collect it. Try not to worry too much. Sam._

When eventually he does get up, he finds himself gravitating towards the bear. It’s laid out on top of the sheets on Bucky’s bed, looking as bedraggled as ever. 

"I thought I was doing the right thing, reaching out to you," He tells it. The bear, of course, does not respond, but he leaves a pause for it anyway. "What else was I meant to do? Is it permanent? Are you always gonna be like this, Buck?" For a moment he almost believes that some part of Bucky has been taken from his body and put into the bear instead. And then it comes back to him that the reality is almost the opposite. 

It feels wrong to put Bucky in the washing machine now, and Steve worries he might disintegrate if he tries. He doesn’t want the bear to look too different if Bucky comes back to it, but he also can’t leave any manifestation of Bucky covered in… That. He washes it carefully and thoroughly with a soaked cloth and dries it as best he can with a towel he’s prepared to throw away before letting it dry near a radiator.

The water he squeezes out of it runs brownish grey, and the whole process takes over an hour. Afterwards the bear seems to have lost a little of its greyness, but its fur still clumps a little and its stuffing contracts back into hard little lumps.

—-

Bucky is anxious and restless and won’t sleep on Sam’s couch or even in his bed when he offers to swap. Sam can only assume that he’s suffering from the disturbing realisation that he can still hear the bear’s thoughts. He looks about sharply every few minutes as though expecting to see someone behind him, and once he runs out of things to say regarding Bucky Bear, he stops talking altogether.

Sam leaves him lying on the couch, staring at the blank TV screen. He hopes, quite illogically, that he’s let Bucky in alongside the Winter Soldier, however little and however damaged. The alternative could end quite badly, for him and for Bucky.


	8. Chapter 8

With nothing to do and no Bucky to keep tabs on, Steve goes shopping for the first time in days and buys food you can’t boil, and then on second thoughts, a load of stuff you can. 

Then he finds himself gravitating to an arts and crafts store, he figures for some retail therapy.

He leaves with a better sewing kit, a bag of synthetic stuffing and four different colours of felt and fake fur. He’s not sure who’s gotten therapy out of this trip, but it sure as hell wasn’t him.

—-

"Read that," Sam tells him, but for once Bucky doesn’t seem interested in obedience. This could be a good sign, but if it isn’t, the last place Sam wants to find out is in a museum with outdated pictures of Bucky’s face plastered all over the walls.

"I know what it says. I’ve read it before." The large, black and white image in front of them shows a youthful, more beautiful, but equally solemn Bucky. Sam wonders if it was taken after he’d already joined the front. "I already came here."

The modern day Bucky walks through the exhibit as fast as the flow of other guests will allow, but he stops dead at the video of himself and Steve laughing and discussing something. They bump shoulders. 

"Explain this," Bucky demands, like he’s Sam’s mother and the video shows Sam shoplifting from some department store. 

"Anything specific you were hoping I could clarify for you?" Sam watches Bucky watch the short clip in silence a few times over. 

"Yes, where is… The sign says Bucky is there." Bucky rubs his closed eyelids as though receiving stressful but not upsetting news at a business meeting. 

"Bucky is there. That’s Bucky," Sam keeps his voice as quiet as possible. An elderly woman is muttering that they’ve been taking up the space for too long. "You are Bucky."

Bucky’s chest heaves in frustration. “No… I… Don’t understand, Bucky B… Bucky…”

"You  _are_  Bucky. The bear was made because there are comic books about Bucky and Captain America, and in one of them, Bucky is a bear. But it’s just you really.” Sam can see the cogs turning in Bucky’s brain. 

They stop as suddenly as they started. “No,” Bucky shakes his head. He doesn’t provide any backing up for his statement; it’s a flat out denial and he refuses to participate any further in the conversation. Bucky smiles tightly at him, the first time Sam's ever seen him smile outside of old footage, but it's the kind of smile his ex-girlfriend gave him when she was telling him it was just too much and she didn't want to do this any more. 

They get to an exhibit on the modern Captain America, and Sam has to give the Smithsonian credit here, because they’re sure as hell keeping up to date. There is a large image of Steve and the other Avengers fighting the Chitauri, and a map of New York before and after. A TV screen behind a glass case plays news footage from the battle. 

Tucked away against the last wall of the entire exhibition is a display entitled, Captain America Today with the beginnings of a panel on the helicarrier incident, and another screen displaying an aggregate of real time news reports on Captain America, the Avengers, and even a few on the break-up of SHIELD. Beneath it is an image of the Winter Soldier, masked and armed and ready to kill. 

Bucky touches it curiously. “Me,” he says. 

Sam says nothing and gently guides Bucky towards the exit. 

Which is either precisely what was needed or a terrible mistake. As they pass through the gift shop, Bucky stops dead. Above a shelf of plastic shields and red and white striped blue spandex costumes is a row of brown stuffed bears, with blue coats and bright red buttons and noses. _  
_

"No, no," Bucky repeats, staring at them with bulging, terrified eyes. Just $19.99, or $9.99 when buying three or more reprints of the original Captain America comics. FREE copy of A-Babies vs. X-Babies with every bear. " _No.”_

Something in Sam's chest aches just to watch Bucky realising that his Bucky Bear is not the only one in the world. Sam wants to know how he failed to see it when he came before, but Bucky has his gloved hands clamped tightly over his ears.

"No no no no no," He says again, as though the words have the power to make it so. 

Sam lets him watch the row of new, red-nosed bears and cheerful signs until his screwed up eyes are leaking at the corners. 

"Is he alright?" A woman with a laminate saying STAFF tries to ask. 

"He’s a vet, sometimes has a little difficulty staying in the moment," Sam deflects, chancing a loose hold on Bucky’s elbow. "Come on, man, let’s get you outside."

Bucky follows him through the doors, then bolts away into the park as soon as they’re clear of the overcrowded steps, and there’s no way for Sam to keep up. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I screwed you all up.  
> This, as you may have guessed from the chapter number thingy, is actually quite a short fic, which I reckon totally deserves someone to write it out and expand on it.  
> But.  
> I have been very busy. And unable to write. And I have commitment issues, apparently.  
> So maybe someone who isn't me.  
> I'm gonna wrap this up nice and neat in the next two chapters, and then there's only the epilogue left.  
> Think warm thoughts.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things finally become slightly less worse.

It takes Sam and Steve the better part of an afternoon to recover Bucky, slumped amongst the undergrowth of the Ash Woods near the D.C. memorial. His knuckles are split and bleeding and his face contorts when he sees them, but he lets them walk him to the car without complaint, and sits limply in the back seat as Sam drops them back at Steve’s apartment. 

"Am I in trouble?" Bucky asks as they slow to a halt, voice soft and disinterested. 

"No," Steve shakes his head. "Of course not, Bucky."

"I kneed you."

For several long, heart stopping seconds, Steve forgets that Bucky is referring to their fight the other day and not a need for Steve personally, and then he feels both selfish and extremely disappointed. He tries not to show it, but he can see sympathy in the set of Sam's mouth. "You did, but it’s okay."

"I shot you." Bucky sags against his seatbelt. 

"That wasn’t your fault."

"I killed maybe eighty people."

Steve sighs and turns back from the passenger seat. “Bucky, you weren’t in control.  _You_  didn’t do any of those things.”

"I - Fuck. I..." Bucky stutters, drawing his knees up onto the car seat. "I want Bucky Bear."

"Come on, Buck. Let’s get you inside," Steve undoes Bucky’s seatbelt and tugs his left arm. "Thanks, Sam, for… You know."

"No problem. Keep me updated."

—-

Bucky slams through Steve’s door so hard the lock splinters. Then, despite his desperation just moments before, he stands stock still in the hallway of Steve’s apartment, like he’s forgotten where to go. 

"Do you want to…?" Steve gestures to the door of the formerly spare room. 

Bucky makes a choked sound and shakes his head. 

"Okay, well… How about we patch up those knuckles?"

Bucky sits on the counter next to the bathroom sink and watches Steve dab at his bruised hands to avoid saying anything. He doesn’t wince when Steve smears them with iodine. 

"I don’t know what’s going on…" Bucky looks tired but not irritable as he had the other day. "Bucky… If I’m Bucky than what is…?"

Steve chews the inside of his mouth and keeps wiping Bucky’s knuckles longer than necessary, trying to find an excuse to lace their fingers together, to offer the kind of comfort he needs to give and Bucky has thus far shown no interest in receiving. ”Sam thinks Bucky Bear was a coping device for you. You couldn’t remember your own name and you couldn’t protect yourself, but when they gave you something with that name, you... You could protect that, so you did.”

"He isn’t real?" Bucky stares down at where Steve still hasn’t dropped his hand.

"He’s kind of real," Steve says, trying to find the words to soothe Bucky without setting him back a pace. "But the things about him that are real are in your head, not outside. He just represents the Bucky you were before Zola got to you." Steve finally lets go and straightens up. "Shall I go and get him?"

Bucky starts to shake his head but it ends up a sort of twisted nod. 

"Alright," Steve smiles sadly and tries his best not to let it show. "Just stay here and I’ll be back in one minute."


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So: This is essentially the end but there is an epilogue still to come.  
> I think we'll all appreciate it being sappy so I'm not sorry.  
> Contains references to chronic illness and ableist attitudes.

Steve takes too long, so Bucky follows him into the living room and finds him sorting through a bag of shopping. He blushes when caught. “I, uh, thought maybe that, um, well I got a load of stuff, needles, thread, that sort of thing…”

"Why?" Bucky sits on the couch, whose cushions have been restored since he last slept here. Bucky Bear sits as upright as he can these days on the coffee table. 

Steve smiles self consciously and sits down next to him. Bittersweet. “You and he, you’ve both been in the wars.”

"You picked that phrase up in England," Bucky says, almost to the bear. Mothers to their sons, Bucky Bear remembers. Back from the war with an arm blown off, home from school with bruised palms and skinned knees. Recovering from a fever. You've been in the wars.

"You remember?" Steve asks, hopeful. Bucky can see the memories on Steve's face, playing before his unfocused eyes. 

"I… I  _know_  it, but I don’t  _remember_  it. If there’s a memory, Bucky Bear tells it to me.” Bucky purses his lips like he’s said something wrong. 

"That’s a good thing," Steve blinks his wistfulness away. "He’s a part of you, too."

Then he pulls a needle from a small container of them and threads it with brown cotton. “I patched you up, now it's his turn. We can fix him up together.”

Bucky nods and picks up Bucky Bear. He smells marginally less awful and looks a little less grey than he remembers. Bucky leans towards Steve to look in the bag. 

He takes out the stuffing. “Are we gonna put new fluff in him?”

"Do you want to?" Steve questions, feeling uncomfortable at the idea of taking anything out of Bucky to put something else in.

But Bucky says, “Yes,” and proceeds to pull out the oddly yellowed, clumped stuffing, putting them on the coffee table. 

He rips the bag open unceremoniously and tugs off a handful of the springy, uniform fibres.

"Here, let me help," Steve says, a little too quickly, as Bucky struggles to fill out the limbs and face of the bear without losing their shapes. 

They’re closer now, pressed shoulder to elbow, fingers brushing together amidst Bucky Bear’s white new innards. It feels familiar, like a memory of something that used to be thrilling but has since settled into a normal, slightly under-appreciated fact of daily life, except that it isn't. It isn't, and Steve wants to be allowed to hold Bucky so badly, to be the thing that Bucky clings to instead of a stuffed animal.

"Did you used to make me better a lot?" Bucky asks. 

Steve laughs a little, soft like the stuffing. “Not really." He intends to leave it there, but nostalgia gets the better of him as it always does. "You used to make me better all the time though. Or you’d try, I was kind of a hopeless case.”

Bucky Bear confirms that this is the truth. Bucky thinks for a moment that it’s odd for something with its insides hanging out and two different people’s hands in its body to be confirming anything, but he knows that Bucky Bear is just a bear, and doesn’t need his insides in to say things. Probably. Maybe. He isn't sure, but he wants to be sure. He knows everyone else is sure, and it's frustrating that this theoretical knowledge hasn't translated into a change in his and Bucky Bear's relationship. He is sure, however, in the way that small children often are, that Bucky Bear would be better off with his insides inside and his leg hole sewn up. Steve used to be like that, he knows, but he isn't sure if that means Bucky is used to patching up large holes in Steve or if Steve was once particularly concerned with the welfare of his cuddly toys. Both sound possible.

"You used to get in all sorts of stupid fights you couldn’t win," Bucky grabs another handful of stuffing just to put his hands against Steve’s again. He remembers how Steve’s mother used to rant after Steve came home roughed up from a fight. "Crappy heart, crappy lungs, faulty everything."

"Pretty much," Steve smiles. It's still conflicted, turned down at one edge. "One time, I passed out from plain old exhaustion in a fight, and the guy beating me up ran away."

"He thought he’d killed you," Bucky quotes the bear at Steve. "But I said, "There’s no way some jerk off the street is gonna manage where your own body’s failed, right?""

"You did," Steve strokes the palm of his hand, and Bucky grabs his fingers, because he's sure that what he's meant to do, what he would've done.

Steve squeezes back for a moment, before he pulls his hand away and tugs Bucky’s back against his side whilst he cuts a new nose out of red fabric. A feeling of hopeless moroseness creeps up on Bucky as he watches. “ _I_  might be a hopeless case, Steve.”

"You’re not," Steve assures him without looking up or missing a beat. He finishes the nose and puts his arm around Bucky’s shoulder to hold the bear whilst he stitches it on. 

"You can’t sew. And you pick stupid fights you always loose," Bucky reminds him, as though Steve's own faults are evidence of poor judgement.

"I can see the needle these days," Steve retorts. "And I think you’ll find I haven’t lost a fight in more than seventy years."

"You lost a fight to me."

Steve doesn't know what to say to that, so he doesn't. He's not so sure that he did lose, and he has no idea who won. Not Bucky.

Bucky watches silently as he sews up Bucky Bear’s missing leg and split seams and stitches on his new nose. Gives him three new red buttons and a new collar for his coat.

"There," He says when he’s finished. He doesn’t say " _Good as new_ ,” because the bear looks nothing _like_ new. The original fabric has pulled out of shape, the shades don’t match, and his leg is gone, and his nose has clearly been added on top of another nose. Bucky takes him from Steve’s hands and rubs that nose with his right thumb, over and over. He thinks maybe the rubbing is what wore it out in the first place. Bucky Bear cannot comment.

He lays his head on Steve’s shoulder. Feels weary and frightened, and even though he knows more than he used to, he feels impossibly more confused.

"It’s alright, Buck," Steve mumbles into his hair, his arm warm and heavy across Bucky's chest. "We’ll patch you up as we go along."

Bucky nods, and settles into it, rubbing Bucky Bear's nose and listening to Steve's unlaboured breathing. It's difficult not to drift, not to pretend it will all be this easy. But he's so tired, from the nights spent pacing the floor at Sam's or standing vigilant over Bucky Bear. He's distantly aware that Steve's body isn't right, doesn't fit to his as it used to, but it's not a thought that's accompanied by any great swell of emotion. He moves Steve's arm so that it's looser round his neck and forces the fit, because Bucky can do that now, he thinks. 

"You'll be okay," Steve promises again, lips bumping the top of his head with a kiss he doesn't quite dare to place. "No one's ever going to take that part of you away again, Buck."

Bucky chooses to believe him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank everyone so much for all their comments and ill wishes on my person :P  
> It means a lot to have people so into the story.


	11. Epilogue: How Bucky Got Bucky Bear and How Bucky Bear Lost His Leg

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first Secretary is not in fact Pierce, but he's a similar kind of guy. 
> 
> Warnings for: More bear/Bucky abuse/mutilation; implied/referenced child abuse. 
> 
> Thanks to people for sticking with this! This chapter is 3 of these little chapters long really but if this is the only fic that has the exact number of chapters I said it would then at least that's one.

“You're sure he'll do it?” The woman in front of him asks, again. She seems doubtful, but not so much so that she avoids talking about it in the Soldier's presence.

“Of course he'll do it!” The Secretary looks at her in something akin to an affectionate warning, as though she's too sexy a PA to fire for asking stupid questions, but that's all that's protecting her. It probably is.

“But Sir,” And maybe she isn't the brightest button, because she doesn't drop it. “He _knew_ Ho- He knew. Before. It's in his file.”

The Secretary looks at her as though he's sipping curdled milk. “Melissa,” He says, and Melissa stops talking. The asset says nothing and doesn't make eye contact, lies still on the table. Not relaxed... Inactive. “Melissa. Let me show you something.”

There is a rustling sound outside of the Soldier's field of vision. He does not turn to look at it.

“Soldier,” The Secretary addresses him directly for the first time since he awoke, shuddering with his voice still broken from his last wipe. “This is Bucky Bear.”

The Secretary holds something out to him, soft against his bare chest. A stuffed bear, brown with a blue coat and big red buttons. He takes it because he thinks he is meant to, and does not say thank you because things are only handed to him when there is a purpose. He rubs the bear's nose, feeling the soft flocked fabric beneath his thumb. Back and forth.

“From now on, you are to hold him at all times,” The Secretary tells him. “Tell me, who is Bucky?”

He holds the bear back out at the Secretary. “This is Bucky Bear.”

“Have you ever heard the name before?” He wants to know.

“Just now, when you--” The Soldier begins to say, but the Secretary cuts him off.

“You see, Melissa? I can assure you, it won't be a problem. Soldier, your mission for today is to eliminate either two or three targets: Target 1, white male, mid forties, a hundred-and-eighty centimetres, Target 2, white female, early forties, a hundred-and-sixty-one centimetres and Target 3, white male, eight years old, one-hundred-and-twenty-three centimetres. Target 3 may or may not be on location...”

  


“Steve?” Bucky calls, panic welling up in his chest. He's standing in front of the bed, his bed, or Bucky Bear's bed, and he doesn't know what to do.

Steve bolts through the door as though Bucky had been crying for help, which he probably was. “What is it?”

“I-I...” He gestures at the bed. His cushions are on the couch. He should sleep in the bed. He is Bucky. The bed belongs to Bucky Bear.

“You could sleep with him?” Steve offers.

“I'm not a child!” Bucky snaps back, and then cowers away because snapping back is Not Allowed.

But Steve puts out his hands, placating. “Okay. Okay. He can sleep with me?”

Bucky frowns, but he hasn't got anything to respond to this, so instead he says, “Sure.”

His bed (Bucky Bear's bed) is comfortable, better than the couch cushions or the floor. He frowns into the plush pillows. This is Bucky Bears bed. He shouldn't be here.

  


“Mission report,” The Secretary barks. Calm, this Secretary always is, but not the usual kind of calm.

“Mission...” He can't remember his mission. His throat is raw from screaming, his temples lightly burned by the electricity. He cannot remember the mission. “Successful,” He says, because he has never failed a mission.

“No,” The Secretary replies.

“No?” The Soldier parrots back. No what?

“You failed me! You failed our cause!” The Secretary frowns, and the Soldier frowns too. Then suddenly the Secretary seems to whip himself up, furious. “You were to eliminate four targets, and do you know how many you killed?”

The Soldier does not know, but from the sound of things it obviously isn't a high number.

“None. Zero.” The Secretary puts his hands on either of the arm rests beside him, one resting on the metal of the Soldier's left arm and on the open restraint over his right. “Bring the bear.”

The Soldier blinks at him. He doesn't have Bucky Bear. Bucky Bear never comes with him on missions, he's too recognisable.

The Secretary isn't talking to him, even though he can feel the man's breath on his face. Somebody else brings the bear instead. The Soldier peers desperately around the Secretary to look at him, his one remaining button and his rubbed off nose. Holes everywhere, a large rip in one leg.

The Secretary leans back, and the Soldier reaches out to take him. He always takes his bear, Bucky Bear. It is his mission to protect him. He can't remember being assigned the mission, but he's sure it's true, knows he is some sort of body guard or carer. The woman holding Bucky Bear is squeezing too tightly; he wants to tell her so, but before he can, the Secretary snatches the bear out of her hands.

The Soldier's own hands dangle in mid air, expectant. Worried, because he has never failed a mission. Bucky Bear wasn't on the mission though. They have to understand.

“I didn't want to have to do this,” The Secretary tells him, forever a parent trying to justify beating a child. Joseph Rogers, the bear supplies, but he has no idea where the name comes from or why, doesn't know what to do with the information.

The Soldier wants to ask what the Secretary doesn't want to do, but asking questions outside of a mission or report is Forbidden.

The Secretary is _definitely_ holding Bucky Bear too tight, crushing his body and his ripped leg. The Soldier watches in horror as he twists and pulls.

“No!” He shouts, fingers closing on the empty air, even though shouting is Not Allowed and shouting at the Secretary is a cardinal sin. His act of rebellion is wasted, though, they must have been expecting him to fight, the metal restraint around his waist won't give. Fabric rips. The sound of the weave and stitches popping apart like a zipper, and the Soldier screams as pain shoots up his leg. “No! No!” He pleads and shouts, his already dry throat shredding his voice to a rough, broken cry.

One final pull wrenches the limb from its owner and the Soldier doubles over in pain, winding himself on the metal bar pinning him in place, tears on his face even though he's certain that he can't cry.

He blubbers like a child, repeating Bucky Bear's name over and over to the cold concrete floor, as though it might hear him and come to their aid, swallow them away from the wrath of their keepers.

The Secretary waits for him, but he is quick to grow impatient. “I didn't want to have to do that!” He says again, as though the Soldier had forced his hand. “You know why I had to do it. Failure is unacceptable!”

“B-Bucky Bear...” Is all the Soldier has to say. “His - his... My leg,” Is in agony. The pain starts at his thigh and hip and radiates down to his knee and up to paralyse his abdomen. So bad, so bad he can barely breathe.

“Your leg?!” The Secretary shouts, but he sounds dismissive. “You have twenty minutes,” The Secretary says over him. The order is not only for the Soldier but to all of his handlers. Then his voice comes again, sudden and close enough to the Soldier's ear that he flinches away. “This is your one chance. You fail again, and I'll burn it in front of you.”

The Soldier dissolves into fresh tears. The Secretary shoves the body of Bucky Bear into the space between his chest and knees, and the Soldier curls around him, trying to shield the bear as best he can. There's a soft thud as the Secretary throws his disembodied leg into the trash.

When he doesn't recover in fifteen minutes, they pry Bucky Bear from his hands and force him back into the seat; restraint over his belly is lifted but those for both his arms come down and the mouthpiece goes in.

 

The Soldier opens his eyes, and they feel gritty and hot. There's a slight ache in his leg, but nothing he can't ignore.

“Mission report,” Says a woman next to him.

“Mission,” He begins. He doesn't remember the mission, but he has never failed before. “Successful.”

His eyes fully focus and settle on the slumped form of Bucky Bear on his usual shelf. Something is wrong. “Bucky Bear, what happened to his leg?” He asks, looking wildly around the room for explanation.

“New mission,” The woman ignores his question. “Protect the helicarriers; three targets. Target one, white male, blond hair, age 29, one-hundred-and-eighty-seven-centimetres, armed with a shield. Target two, white female, red hair, twenty-nine, one-hundred-and-seventy-one centimetres, armed with multiple side arms and electrical stun devices. Target three, black male, black hair, aged thirty-three, one-hundred-and-eighty-six centimetres, armed with an EXO-7 Falcon flight suit...”

  


Bucky wakes from a suffocating nightmare alone in a strange bed, with no Bucky Bear and no Steve. For several seconds all he can feel is fury, that they would go off and leave him alone, until he remembers that he _is_ Bucky Bear. He kicks off the covers and picks his way through the apartment in the dark to Steve's room.

He turns on Steve's light, ignoring the reluctant groan from Steve when he shields his eyes and checks the clock. 4:13 AM.

“I'm pretty sure this isn't right,” Bucky tells him, like they haven't just woken up, but have been having this conversation for hours. He can see Steve's interest peak when he sounds more like his “old self”, and Steve's eyes blink open properly.

“What isn't?” Steve sits up. The repaired Bucky Bear is in the bed next to him, propped against his own pillow.

Bucky doesn't know what, but he does kick Bucky Bear out of bed, letting him fall to the floor. It doesn't matter. He's just a soft toy.

He takes Bucky Bear's place, and then silently panics at what he's done, picks up Bucky Bear and places him at the foot of the bed instead. “I think I'm meant to go here.”

“Yeah,” Says Steve. “I mean, it's alright.” He sounds asleep but does his best to look alert.

Bucky lies back in the bed and shuts off the light, and then thrashes around, agitated as the Wrongness doesn't resolve itself for several minutes.

“Are you okay, Buck?” Steve asks in the gloom.

Bucky scowls at him for failing to identify the cause of the problem, the feeling that he's only half there. Steve can't see it, though, and Bucky doesn't say anything.

He feels the bed move, Steve groping in the dark. “Here,” Steve whispers, tucking Bucky Bear above their heads behind the pillows. “Night Bucky.”

Bucky leaves a long pause before he realises that Steve is talking to him. “Yes.” It's not the right response, but at least he tried.

Good night, Steve, Bucky Bear tells him, is what you're supposed to say.

“Yeah, that,” Bucky agrees, words slurring as he falls asleep, not quite touching either of them. Something like that.

 


End file.
